Exploiting Dr. King--Enemies who paint themselves as friends

Br. Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes: "In the late 1960s when King denounced the Vietnam war, embraced militant union struggles, and barnstormed around the country blasting wealth and class privilege, the red-baiters and professional King haters branded him a Communist. The Lyndon Johnson White House turned hostile. Corporate and foundation supporters slowly turned off the money spigot....

"In his last installment on King, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, Taylor Branch tells how King stormed out of a planning meeting for his Poor People's March, in fury at the attacks directed at him by some of his top aides who wanted to scrap the March. The issue of uniting masses of poor people for economic uplift smacked of class war and was too risky and dangerous....

"King's civil rights friends weren't the only ones that took shots at him. Many black ministers joined in the King bash.... [T]he National Baptist Convention in 1961, then (and now) the largest black religious group in America... flung threats and insults at King, and the civil rights advocate-ministers engaged in fisticuffs with them andslandered King as a 'hoodlum and crook.'"Even worse now are all the neo-conservatives sliming their way out of the sewers to claim Dr. King as one of their own. Can you believer it? Read the above, and then listen to THE TERRORDOME Wednesday at 6 PMto hear MLK's classic "Beyond Vietnam" speech which makes absolutely clear that conservatives have nothing in common with King, one of the most radical leaders the US has ever produced.